Stephen Humphrey at NEWSFix gives Tesseracts Thirteen a great review/examination on its themes of horror and character. “The stories… suggest there is more to the national psyche than tall trees and weather. They don’t so much make the landscape the character, as the familiar CanLit trope goes, as they make characters the characters. The supernatural and suspense add nuance to personality studies. They’re not simply special effects.”
My short story, “The Weak Son”, gets specific mention:
For example, the ghost of a troubled teen in “The Weak Son” by Ottawa writer Matthew Moore is not a room-wrecking poltergeist, but a window on emotions and secrets of his family. The threats of real violence in the present and possible crime in the past drive the story, but its payoff is in small discoveries, not bleeding walls and butcher knives.
My friend Suzanne Church also gets praise, this time from Tesseracts Thirteen co-editor David Morell, who points to Suzanne’s “The Tear Closet” as good psychological writing. In that poetic and heartbreaking tale supernatural activity pales against horrors wrought by the living.
The full article can be found at:
http://www.newsfix.ca/2010/02/09/psychological-horror-dominates-the-dark-fiction-of-tesseracts-13/.